Tom shrugged. He doesn’t like shopping, but one thing I like doing with Tom is walk through a store filled with “stylish” expensive shit and ask him to guess how much stuff costs.

“That looks like trash,” Tom said quite a few times that afternoon, because oddly, a lot of expensive stuff looks like trash, especially these sneakers. I grabbed them from the display and showed them to Tom.

“They’re $1000,” I said.

Tom shook his head, “You’re a bum and you can’t afford shoes made out of trash.”

We wondered what kind of person would spend money on shoes like that. We didn’t have to wait long to find out. As we left Barney’s, a man, wearing what appeared to be clothes cut from a softer version of cardboard, walked in wearing those shoes. A well-to-do bum, with expensive taste.

Anyway, Tom’s thoughts this week are sparse, not because he had less thoughts but because I’ve been busy trying to un-bum myself.

Tom’s been reading a lot and recently finished Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. He is now reading David McCullough’s excellent and extremely well-reviewed biography on The Wright Brothers, which his parents gave him for Christmas. Tom doesn’t care much for reviews, but I do, so I will probably read it when he is finished.

Much of our conversation these days revolves around job-hunting, for obvious reasons.

“It’s demoralizing,” Tom said, trying to be supportive, “It says nothing about your abilities. I applied for like five restaurant jobs when I was in college and no one would hire me.”